LET TERS
CAPSTONE 2.0?
Regarding the removal of trees and the
new apartment building on Orchard and
East 15th Avenue, 12 mature trees were
removed. Will this be another Capstone
project, which is widely regarded to have
been a debacle with minimal plantings and
inadequate setbacks from the street? Is
anyone from the city monitoring this?
George Evans
Eugene
LOVE NOT WRATH
Regarding Lon Miller’s letter, “God’s
Wrath,” of June 30, 2016: Lon Miller, with
your medieval Biblical thinking, beware
you throw stones. You may go down the
“Drain.” We have been married for 27
years and have yet to become “perverts
and deviants.” It is your deviant thinking
that causes hatred and “stone-throwing”
in this world. Someone must have torn the
pages out of your Bible where Jesus speaks
of love and compassion.
Joanne James
Eugene
EXPLAIN TRAGEDY
Recently, our neighbor in Drain, Lon
Miller, “took up” his Bible and found
VIEWPOINT
satisfactory evidence to purport that
Orlando’s mass murder is, in fact, no other
than the modern day equivalent of Sodom and
Gomorrah.
Perhaps Lon can thumb his Bible
a bit longer and proffer a verse or two
that explains his God’s wrath in regard
to another Miller Family: a Christian
family of six who recently were all but
exterminated in a horrific train accident in
rural Colorado. An extremely tragic event
that claimed the lives of the mother, father
as well as three young daughters on their
way to church. One daughter, 4 years old,
was the sole survivor.
Robin Kelly
Eugene
DOG BOOK
This is in response to what I would call
a hate mail letter to pit bulls.
Anyone interested in pit bulls, bulldogs,
dogs and the human-animal relationship
would be smart to read a book called
Bandit: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog. The
author, Vicky Hearne (now deceased), was
a nationally known dog and horse trainer,
but a poet and philosopher as well who
taught for a time at Yale. To quote from
the cover, this book is a “dramatic report
from the front lines of the ‘pit bull wars,’ is
a penetrating inquiry into the appropriate
relations between animals and the human
world, a song of praise for the ‘dance of
friendship’ between animals and people,
and a hell of a dog story.”
“Hearne brings a poet’s keen eye, a
philosopher’s supple mind and a trainer’s
true knowledge of dogs to the issues
surrounding Bandit’s case and her three-
year battle to snatch him from the jaws
of the judicial system. Witty, fiercely
intelligent, eloquent, Bandit is essential
reading for anyone who cares about animal
happiness and human justice.”
The library has this book.
One thing — because Hearne is a
philosopher, there are occasional rambles into
that territory. Just persevere. It is worth it.
Anne Hollander
Eugene
CORPORATE LOGGING
The BLM is working hard to increase
logging on our federal public forests in
western Oregon by 37 percent. This is
exactly the opposite direction we should
be going in light of global warming, mass
species extinction and the need to protect
our quality drinking water. Why would they
SELF GOVERNMENT
No doubt, there is something stirring
among the citizenry of this country. People
are starting to react to the malaise of
alienation, insignificance and hopelessness
that the consumer, corporate-owned
culture has used to colonize our minds.
Example one: Although blasted by
the media as a movement that couldn’t
articulate its goals, the occupy movement
BY PAUL NICHOL SON
Accountability Is the
Real Problem
H
ere we go again — up to 30 more
years of urban renewal, because “the
city concludes that the entire urban
renewal area is blighted.” After 48
years and approximately $130 million
(surely over a quarter of a billion dollars adjusted
for inflation), the total taxable valuation of all of
the property in the district is not even equal to the
inflation-adjusted tax money we have poured into it.
Urban renewal’s failure, however, is not the cause
of the ineffectiveness of Eugene’s city government,
nor is it the only or the most important betrayal of the
public interest.
To understand Eugene politics, one must
contemplate just how upside-down city governance
has become. In theory, elected councilors bring
the priorities of the community to the table and the
manager administers council’s direction.
In Eugene, the city manager does the politics, and
council appears unconcerned about public support
for the manager’s agenda. This state of affairs is not
so much the fault of our elected officials as it is the
inevitable result of a charter that endows the manager
with way too much power.
When I was elected to Eugene City Council in
the early 1990s, then Councilor Shawn Boles warned
me that councilors were like mushrooms “kept in the
dark and fed manure.” Council’s real influence on
Eugene’s civic affairs is so minimal that most council
seats are uncontested. City councilors are not even
4
be doing this, you ask? They are pressured
by the legislators who are given large
amounts of money via campaign donations
by the logging industry and are using the
archaic O&C Act of 1937 as the reason.
We should be having an “all hands on
deck” attitude to save our public forests
here, as they are one of the best in the world
for carbon sequestration and important
habitat for wildlife. Our forests are a
key component to mitigating the global
warming crisis. It is no exaggeration to state
that all life on Earth depends on us to give
our energy and focus to save our forests
and oceans, transition off of fossil fuels,
localize food systems and build resilient
and truly sustainable communities.
Pam Driscoll
Dexter
July 7, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
given an office!
I want to highlight the negative results of the power
imbalance in our peculiar version of the city manager
form of government. In short, our city government is
by its nature unaccountable, wasteful and indifferent
to the priorities of the citizens.
Here are two examples of projects that are despised
by the public, yet sanctioned by our docile council
despite public outrage. You can see that the Urban
Renewal scam is chump change compared to the cost
of these unloved projects.
Police palace Despite two citizen advisory
exercises which urged that police headquarters
remain downtown near City Hall, City Manager Ruiz
inexplicably purchased a forlorn white elephant, for
Eugene’s “new” police headquarters — total budget
$35 million for the building and its remodeling. The
new police facility is several times the size of the old
digs.
City Hall fiasco The City Council commissioned a
study of the cost of refurbishing our existing, award-
winning mid-century modern City Hall. The highest
estimate to refurbish our iconic City Hall was $12
million. The manager and his minions attacked the
work of their own consultant and pressured council
to approved a new $15 million City Hall. The price
tag has already risen to $25 million and still climbing.
Once again, citizen input overwhelmingly supported
refurbishing the existing historic City Hall.
And then there is a second strategy for avoiding
any meaningful public discussion of our revenue
priorities — indirect subsidies of private projects.
Consider these two examples:
MUPTE project Student housing projects such as
Capstone (13th and Olive) not only received 10-year
tax exemptions, but also received all sorts of other
indirect benefits from the city. For example, Capstone
was permitted to start construction without permits
and to ignore design standards that would be imposed
on local developers. So far, we have forgone about
$2,110,000 in taxes.
Of course, as time passes, and more MUPTE
projects are built, this number will balloon. Who will
ever build an apartment complex on his own dime
now that Ruiz set this awful precedent?
Sweetheart deals For example, during Jon Ruiz’s
first three years at the helm in Eugene, the city’s rent
expense increased from $665,631 to $1,431,442, an
increase of more than $775,000 annually. City offices
were moved out of their existing market rate office
space into the new urban renewal subsidized office
space, not only massively increasing the city’s rent
bill, but even paying the developers for all unrented
space.
These examples are truly the tip of the iceberg.
Ending the urban renewal slush fund would be
a good start, but would not, by itself, fix Eugene’s
broken politics. Council should have kept its word
and closed the Downtown Urban Renewal District.
But still more importantly, our council and mayor
should be required to refer to the voters any action
that subsidizes private development or funds a major
capital improvement. Your property taxes should fund
basic city services unless you, the folks who pay the
bills, give the city bureaucracy permission to use your
money for some other purpose.
Paul Nicholson is a former Eugene city councilor, and the founder of Paul’s
Bicycle Way of Life.